Translating Nouzha Fassi Fihri's La Baroudeuse: A Case Study in ...

eliefs, and trampled our traditions. Then they portrayed us to ourselves as
barbarians."
"This way of doing things doesn't pay in the long run. Sooner or later our
people, who have been wounded to the core, will rise up like a hurricane and
sweep away everything in their path."
"God protect the faithful. The days to come are menacing."
"And I decided to come back now. It's my fate to always swim against the
tide. Let's go see the medina and pay our respects to the patron saints before it's
too late. I have a feeling the apocalypse is near."
The two men smiled to hide the apprehensions that tortured them. The
people could not continue with impunity the demands, meetings, and
demonstrations of anger and rebellion which the colonizer considered scandalous.
The colonial powers would react, and the casualties would surely be heavy.
They left the house and went to the old city as pilgrims visiting holy
sanctuaries. At the end of the street, Moulay Ali gave in to the urge to look back
and contemplate the house his ancestors had built. With its crenelated rooftop
terraces and enclosed central courtyards, it resembled a flower bed of gigantic
blossoms in a profusion of greenery. It had two distinct parts. There was the area
where guests were received, a group of rooms and arcades arranged around an
open-air patio, all in white marble, and prolonged by a garden where very old
orange and lemon trees branched out above a jumble of weeds, roses, carnations
and jasmine that perfumed the air and crackled under the relentless sun. And there
was the house where the family usually served meals, where dozens of female
slaves and servants used to live. There they slept, worked, sewed, polished, and
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